John Romita Sr.

A giant has left us

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

This week saw my attention split between the coloring process of the two covers I briefly showed last week and the grey tones for the pages I’ve been working on in the past couple of months.

But the real news were that this Monday we lost legendary comic artist John Romita Sr.

Romita

The news of Romita’s death came from the equally legendary son, John Romita Jr. Its’s an heartbreaking situation, despite of his advanced age. The truth is that people like John Romita Sr. are always gone too soon.

Romita was THE Spider-Man artist for me when I was growing up. His beautiful artwork in stories like Spider-Man’s wedding and the death of Gwen Stacey made Spidey my favorite superhero, as the power of his storytelling was incredibly impactful through his incredible body of work. To me, only one artist ever matched him while creating such a definitive version of Spider-Man - and it's not a coincidence that his name is also John Romita.

One only has to read the many words written by the industry greatest to understand how appreciated Romita Sr. really was.

As a testament of extraordinary storytelling abilities, check this very famous page from Amazing Spider-Man #122 that was making the rounds on social media. Layouts were done by Gil Kane with final art by John Romita, but John also redrew some panels and pages, like this ending you can see here below.

As you can easily see, John’s changes were profound and made this final page have an incredible impact. Couple his narrative vision with his impeccable drawing abilities (anatomy, perspective, things like faces, hands, cloth folding) and you have on hell of an artist.

One that will be forever remembered.

Covers

As for my work this week, the part regarding the covers (two dust jacket covers, one for Phenomena Book 2, another for a Righteous Thirst special edition) was focused on working with Chris O’Halloran as he colored both pieces. Through the process, Chris sends me works-in-progress for me to chime in. By being in touch we save each other’s time by applying changes early on before too much rendering or effects are done.

Firstly, allow me to show you the San Diego Comic Con exclusive dust jacket cover for A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance HC. Final design (with logo, credits, etc) is still being worked on, but we’re aiming at something minimal at the moment.

As for the Phenomena cover, for now I’ll leave you with just a taste I shared on my social media:

Both images will get a step by step in a future newsletter as both processes were incredibly fun and interesting. And the fact that I did them at the same time will make for a good comparison between approaches and concepts.

Grey tones

Finally, just a glimpse of what’s going on with the main gig. Next week my work for Phenomena Book 2 will be done and I’ll have much more to show, as well as an appreciation of the long stint I put myself into and how well (or how bad) it went.

In terms of the story itself though: Whatever got their attention made for some great pages, let me tell you that.

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Tomorrow I’ll be at a Portuguese comic convention, Maia BD. Looking forward to meet readers, sign books and draw a few sketches. And above all, to be with friends.

If you’re from nearby, I hope to see you there. Have a good one!